


beautiful meanings in ugly things

by seinmit



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde, The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde (Comics)
Genre: Case Fic, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Post-Canon, Religious Discussion, Seduced by Hyde's Philosophy, Undercover in an Opium Den, philosophical musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: The early stages of investigation are not so different from seduction and Tom, after years of resistance, lets himself be seduced.
Relationships: Thomas Adye/Henry Hyde
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	beautiful meanings in ugly things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Panny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/gifts).



> This fic takes liberties with the plot and characters of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , as is suited to the comic! In addition to that book, there are references to _Invisible Man_ by HG Wells (1897) and _Pharos, the Egyption_ by Guy Boothby (1899). The false names that Tom and Hyde give at one point are from _The Green Carnation_ by Robert Smythe Higgins (1894). Parts of the description is heavily inspired by Wilde’s book itself, especially that of the opium den. 
> 
> My historical research on the period was geared far more toward aesthetic than accuracy—I welcome any historical notes, but consider this exactly as historical as the comic book tried to be. 
> 
> I hope you like it! I had a lot of fun writing it for you. It’s set a few years after the end of the comic.
> 
> Thanks so much to R. for their assistance curbing my modern tendencies.

> Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
> 
> Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. -Oscar Wilde

“The Sunday service is turning into a nursery game, or a stage play. I go to confess my sins—if I wanted a spectacle that deserved applause, I’d go to the theater and keep the sin.” 

The ladies sitting next to the maker of this pronouncement seemed to recoil away from him without moving their bodies, picking up tea-cups and burrowing their smiles into the drink. Harrowden, Tom thought. Earnest Harrowden. 

“Oh, darling,” Lady Narborough said. "Let's not speak of such things—you sound like you should be preaching on a street and I shan’t have my parlor be mistaken for a sewer.” 

She was the hostess and had the sort of ugliness that not even wealth could touch. Tom liked her more than most in the room, nonetheless—her eyes were sharp, and even as she fluttered, he could see her calculating. 

“And besides,” a different man said, his long fingers reaching forward to pluck a sandwich off a tray. “What do you know of sin? You are far too boring for any sins worth keeping—I suspect, if you were to confess under a Roman seal, you’d be forgiven for lying to your wife about something tedious. What have you done recently? Did you sneak an extra cake she was saving to add to her own waist?” 

He took a bite of the sandwich, his perfect white teeth sinking into perfect white bread, and smiled around it. Lord Henry Wotton, he’d introduced himself. May Tom one day escape this plague of Henrys, all eager to tell him their philosophical musings. 

Harrowden rolled his eyes and puffed his chest. He looked even smaller, somehow, when he did that. 

“The Church has incense, now—glittering colors, splendor, even organ music, for pity’s sake.” 

“Oh, do take the Lord’s name in vain instead,” Lord Henry said. “That would give you something to confess.”

“Harry,” Lady Narborough scolded. “Behave.” 

“Shan’t,” he said and the ladies tittered. 

“There’s no nourishment for the spirit in the Roman rite,” Harrowden said. “It’s like eating bread made out of sawdust.” 

Not a single person at this table had ever eaten anything of the kind, Tom knew for a certainty. The bread here was sweet and soft, the fillings flavored with delicate herbs. Lady Narborough had spent the first half of tea bragging about the French expertise of her chef, after all. 

“Mr. Gray showed me some of the Catholic art he has been collecting,” said Lady Alice. The hostess’s daughter, and, judging by the light that hit her mother’s eyes, it was good news indeed that this Gray was showing her child art. “It was exquisite. He has a cope—part of the raiment, quite like a cloak—made of gold-thread damask, with the most charming little pomegranates embroidered into it. It just glitters with seed-pearls and the thread itself shines in the light. I quite want a dress like that, I think—I’d be a Roman Persephone, with all those pomegranates.” 

“If Mr. Gray is to convert, that's reason enough to be suspicious,” Lord Stravely said. There was a dire note in his voice that pricked Tom’s policeman’s ears. It was probably nothing but the pointless scandal of the upper crust, but he’d learned rather quick that the fish rots from the head. 

“George,” Lady Narborough said, scolding once again. Her perfectly built tea was crumbling from the obstreperousness of the men around her and Tom could see in her eyes the anger that provoked. No woman wanted to be a fish-wife when she imagined being a queen. “Dorian is a friend of the family.”

“His sense of taste is impeccable,” Lord Henry added. "And taste is the only faculty one should consider when choosing how to spend one’s Sundays.”

Now both Lord Stravely and Mr. Harrowden were ready to object. Tom watched them, waiting with some eagerness to see he’d raise his racket first in this little tennis match. 

Lady Narborough set her tea-cup down with a clink that was loud enough to make a point. It wasn’t garish, but with bone china that fine, any impact must be a calculated risk. 

“Today is Saturday,” she said, firm. “Let's not speak of Sunday. Time passes too quickly to be hasty in leaping forward. And regardless, we are ignoring our guest.” 

She turned her body toward Tom. He was seated in a place of pride, but he felt more like a scientific specimen under observation than a peer. That was accurate, all things told. Perhaps he could upgrade himself to the hired entertainment, if all went well. 

“Inspector Adye,” she said, new warmth in her voice. "I'm told you recently closed the most fascinating case. Was it really true that the dust of mummies had such curative effects as to be worth stealing?” 

That was what they told the papers. His smile cracked his face and the thought of that sent his memory straight back to the strange basement where he’d found the man. In the full light of day, he’d seemed impossibly old, but the candlelight had revealed him to be older still. The rolls and wrinkles in his skin had been made of yellowed linen, keeping the undead body together, and his pickled lungs sent out fumes instead of breath. The sight of him had been a greater horror than the corpses they’d found, deeper in that basement, and harder to forget. The desiccated bodies stolen from Egyptian tombs were scattered among those still pink with blood. Pharos had survived on that strange cocktail. 

“Lady Narborough, I’m afraid it is just superstition. But superstition can be a powerful force in making men act against their better natures,” he said. “Some very wicked men used that superstition to get very rich, as is their wont.” 

“You must get better at telling that story, old chap," Lord Henry said. “Something about your voice strips all the romance out of it.” 

It was all Tom could do to smile. 

“Well,” he said. “Let me try again. Scotland Yard first heard report—“

* * *

By the end of tea, Tom felt tension thrum in his entire body. He was a violin tuned too tight and the merest glance of a bow would snap every single string. Lord Henry kept smiling at him, watching to see the moment when the tower would come toppling down. Tom half-suspected the reason he did not flinch was to avoid giving Wotton the satisfaction. 

But when his boots hit cobbled street, he let himself walk instead of taking a hansom back to the Yard. The hard strike of his soles against stone jarred him all the way up his back and there was something appealing about giving concrete origin to the ache that was sure to rise there from this wretched afternoon. 

“Hullo,” a cheerful voice said, on his right. Tom didn't have to look to know it was Hyde. 

“You have terrible taste in dining companions," Tom said. “I should arrest you just for that.” 

Hyde bumped their shoulders together, close enough that Tom could smell his heavy wool coat, his bitter cologne, and the strange miasma of pheromones that seeped from every pore. It was the serum that made him smell that way, but Tom had no scientific explanation for why he found it so compelling. 

“You’re not going to arrest me,” he said. 

“Maybe I’ll try killing you again,” Tom said. Hyde laughed as if it were a marvelous joke. 

“I made no promises that they would be enjoyable company,” he said. “I just thought it was wise you stop in. What did you think of our Lord Henry Wotton?” 

“He thinks he’s very clever,” Tom said. 

“He’s not all wrong.” 

“If you told me what I was looking for, perhaps I would have some more pertinent observations.” 

“There’s nothing so useful as an unbiased mind, Tom," he said. “Isn’t that the scientific method? Examine the evidence without preconception.” 

“Typically I’m examining evidence from a crime," Tom said. “Not infrequently it was committed by you. This time, however, the only reason I was there is your note paired with the invitation, telling me I ought to go.” 

“And I’m so very flattered that was enough," Hyde said. 

They walked in silence for some blocks. Hyde had a fondness for leading Tom around with a ring in his nose like a bull, but over the last few years, Tom had learned that sometimes obstinacy would frustrate him enough that he would deign to be obvious. 

“Dorian Gray was supposed to be there," Hyde said, finally. There was a note of something strange in his voice, akin to an apology. 

That stopped Tom dead in the street. He reached out and grabbed Hyde’s coat. When Hyde turned to face him, smiling and straightening the lay of his lapels, Tom was well aware that he allowed the rudeness. He didn’t care. He was furious. 

“You had me go through that pink-tinted nightmare to observe a man who _failed to attend_?” he said. He could hear the growl in his own voice. 

Hyde shifted his shoulders under his coat, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. For another man, such restless movements would reveal some nervousness—for Hyde, it was probably just glee that Tom was revealing enough to show any temper. He always took such special pleasure in Tom’s lack of control. 

“Well, I wanted you to observe Lord Henry, too," he said. Anything apologetic had vanished, replaced by impishness. 

“Damn you, Hyde,” Tom said. He huffed a breath through his nose and ran his hand through his hair. “Just tell me what I’m looking for. What crime am I aiming to solve?” 

“A murder,” Hyde said, eyes bright. "Or several of them. More than several, if you focus more on the final cause instead of the efficient cause. Or is it the formal cause? Ahh, Aristotle—“

“Who. Died.” 

“Most recently? Basil Hallward, the artist, and James Vane, the vagrant sailor. If you stretch the bounds of the thing further, one might add Sibyl Vane and other assorted ruined women to the count.” 

It was the flaw in him that Hyde exploited in these moments. Some piece of Tom that sat up and took notice at precisely the most vile examples of humanity. For a long time he’d told himself that a simple desire to do good led to his fervor in cases such as this, but if nothing else, Hyde had forced him to admit it couldn’t be only that. Some passion in his breast came alight and echoed the fervor in Hyde’s eyes—it was what set his face in a smile and stretched Hyde’s lips into a grin. 

“There you are, Tommy boy,” Hyde said. "Now you see the game.” 

“Murders aren’t games,” Tom said. Hyde ignored this, not judging it as necessary to rebut. 

“Gray is the center,” Hyde said. “And it is one of our peculiar cases, I more than suspect. Have you ever met Dorian Gray? He doesn’t precisely travel in your circles, but he is rather a notable.” 

“I have not,” Tom said.

“He’s a lovely boy, fresh-faced and beautiful, and the tender year of thirty-eight.” 

“What?” 

Hyde’s smile showed teeth. “You heard me, my friend. Thirty-eight, with soft plump skin and lips the perfect red of a fresh rose in morning. Strange, don’t you think?” 

Tom hummed. He could feel the wrinkle between his eyes form from thought. 

“The serum doesn’t make you beautiful," he said. He ignored Hyde clasping his hands to his breast and shouting about a deep cut. “Certainly our recently departed friend Pharos was no youth. Griffin was invisible and beauty is precisely the opposite—“

He cut himself off. Hyde was looking entirely too pleased with himself, theatrics about his own beauty aside. 

“Do you know the origin of this power?" he asked. He narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to Hyde, trying to make himself physically intimidating. He knew it was futile, in an objective sense, but somehow the heat of his body sometimes made Hyde pliable nonetheless. 

Hyde smiled at him and licked his lips. 

“Not precisely,” he said. “But we could try asking him. His kills seem to come from the more ordinary set of villainous skills—I suspect that I would be more than a match for him physically.” 

Tom took his eyes away from the quirk of Hyde's smile and met his gaze straight on. “Well, then. If he wasn’t at tea, do you know where he was?” 

“Somewhere very wicked indeed,” Hyde said. "We must make ourselves fit the milieu, if anything could take the stink of a policeman off you.” 

Tom looked heavenward for patience, only for a pang in his chest to leave him wondering whether anyone there would listen to him anymore. Hyde tugged his sleeve to get him walking again and they turned toward Tom’s apartment.

* * *

Hyde threw open Tom’s wardrobe door, Tom a few steps behind him. It had been strange, at first, to see Hyde in his rooms. He kept a simple household, with only the most basic furnishings. His rug was well-made but worn, the color faded where light from his window had bleached it over many years. Hyde, even in the drab he favored to keep under the radar, radiated a degree of color and kinetic energy that ill befit the rest of Tom’s life. 

By now, after several years of uneasy and secret partnership battling the most peculiar of crimes, Tom’s rooms felt as though they only existed when Hyde was in them. He was a phosphorescent glow that revealed the truth, and without him, Tom was in a dark cave, trying to make out the world around him in flickers and shadow. 

“I suppose you’ll relish rubbing dirt on my face, per usual,” Tom said. 

“Not a slovenly sort of wicked today, Tom. Dorian cares only for beautiful things—if you want him to speak to you, we must find beauty in your dreariness.” 

He was pushing Tom’s normal attire aside, reaching for a suit that Tom pointedly kept at the back. It had been an uneasy gift, early on, and Tom hadn’t worn it since. He’d told Hyde he’d turned it into rags and there was something unsettling in Hyde’s certainty that it was still there. 

“This one, my boy, this one,” he said, handing it over to Tom. 

“You make a very pushy valet,” Tom said. 

“All the best ones are,” Hyde said, airy. 

Tom faced the wall to put on the suit. He knew better than to ask Hyde to leave. He felt Hyde’s eyes on his back and it settled in his stomach, somewhere just beside nausea. 

The suit was too light for the weather, loose-fitting and with a high, round collar—it was strangely juvenile and it made him feel like a bad actor to wear it. He didn’t have the simper in him for a suit like this and had little capacity to fake it. 

“Brown boots, Tom,” Hyde said. “And your very nicest stockings.” 

Tom rolled his eyes at the wall and did as he was told. It was a relief to button up his black coat over the dandyish attire. Hyde pouted at him, a moue on his lips. Tom didn’t bother to respond to this childishness—Hyde fit the suit, that was a certainty. 

It was near to evening, darkness seeping in around the edges. “Doesn’t debauchery typically begin later than this?" Tom said as they walked toward a disreputable part of London. 

“For Mr. Dorian Gray, from what I hear, the debauchery never has a chance to begin, given that it never ends,” Hyde said. On their way, he stopped them to purchase two savage green carnations, blooming wildly. He was picky with the florist, rejecting the first couple offerings. When he had his wishes fulfilled, he had the man box them carefully up in paper and he carried it in his hands. Tom decided not to ask. 

When they reached their destination, it was far seedier than he expected: a shabby little house, squeezed between two buildings that seemed to be leaning on it for support and near to toppling over. The house didn’t seem to bear even its own weight, much less the rest of the block. Hyde paused before the door and unbuttoned his coat, revealing a suit much like Tom’s. He carefully placed one of the carnations in his buttonhole. 

Instead of asking Tom to undo his own damn coat, Hyde reached out with clever fingers and popped the buttons out himself. Tom found himself with breath in his throat, as if his mind was holding it in to spare him from the bitter green of Hyde's galbanum and oakmoss cologne. He could not avoid it entirely, and it mixed with the pepper-scent of the carnation. It was enough to drown out the London stench, miracle of miracles, and the distraction of it carried him. When Hyde adjusted his lapel and fixed a bloom to it, he almost started. 

Hyde smirked and looked up at him through his eyelashes, head still tilted down. It was just a moment, but it was enough to send a frisson through Tom’s nerves. 

“There,” he said, backing away. He turned to the door and knocked in a particular rhythm, rocking on his feet in the manic way of his. Tom heard someone come to the door and the metallic noise of a chain being undone. A small figure, twisted so much that the sex was impossible to know, beckoned them in. 

Fragrant smoke suffocated him at his first step in the dark corridor. There was a long hall, ending in a green curtain that at one point must have been the color of the flower in their lapels. The scent was strange and herbal, curling in his throat with every breath—strangely sweet, reminiscent of candied lavender. It twisted in his mind with the memory of Hyde’s cologne and it was all Tom could do not to let it go to his head. 

Hyde, in front of him, took a deep breath as though he were standing on the seaside and sighed gustily. He smiled over his shoulder at Tom and said, “Welcome to one sort of hell, mate. This one is rather fun.” 

Tom tried to look less like an officer of the law, but his eyes fell on every instance of iniquity to catalogue it in turn. Opium was not illegal, but these unfortunates surely did not maintain the right side of the law in the rest of their lives. The room they entered was lit only by the flaring of gas jets on which the people burned their treasure, surrounded by crouched and dirty bodies. There were rings of stains on the floor, from liquor spills, and two women with few teeth between them cackled to provide musical accompaniment to the horror. 

“We’re looking for a particular man," he heard Hyde say to the proprietor. Tom let him handle it, eyes caught by young woman who had once been beautiful but now only seemed tired—her skin was papery, stretched too thin over not enough flesh, and her hair was limp. She smiled, but it was a strange caricature of joy, puppet asked to sing a love song. 

Before he knew it, Hyde had taken his elbow and led him deeper into the room, up a flight of stairs, and into a place where apparently the better degenerates denned. Several people lounged on pillows that had once been fine. One of them laughed, a brittle sound, and Tom could see the hollow depths of his eyes. 

Hyde took Tom to a corner and helped him out of his coat like a child before sitting him down on a yellow velvet couch. He flung their coats onto the arm of their new seat and sat close enough that the heat of his body was a searing presence through Tom’s entirely too-thin suit. 

He placed his hand on Tom’s leg and Tom flinched. 

“Behave,” Hyde said, with humor in his voice. He leaned in, tilting his body toward Tom’s and reaching up to ruffle his hair. “You can pass for nice enough to look at if you manage to relax.” 

“Which one is Gray?” Tom said, in a whisper. 

“I’ll get us some libations,” Hyde said. "I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.” 

He stood, then, but hesitated before leaving. He stood over Tom, looking down at him with a strange light in his eyes, and leaned in to press a chaste, closed-mouth kiss onto Tom's forehead. 

“Pretend you have a beautiful soul," he said, into Tom’s skin. That cut as no wound of the flesh ever had. 

With that, he was gone. Tom missed him immediately, feeling strange amongst all this strangeness. He reminded himself that he was here for a reason, that they were looking for someone, and settled back in the couch to counter his sharp eyes with loucheness in body. 

It was mostly men in the room and they were clearly mostly rich—or had been, at some point. Their suits were nicely cut and well fitted to bodies no longer had. Each man had been someone once, but was no longer—only a shambling, strange body. Like Lazarus, if he had risen only to die many little deaths. Formerly fine fabric and bright, intelligent eyes had no luster; what had been charming, cultivated conversation was now dull and dead. 

All save one man. 

Once Tom was looking at the room as a whole, it took no effort to spot him. Everyone else in the room seemed to lean toward him, even if they were turned away. He was a marble statue on a soft mattress, pulling everyone else down toward him. He was, undeniably, beautiful—gleaming, even. The whorls of smoke that had settled on everyone else’s flesh, dirtying them and making them dull, only gave him a strange mystery. For him, the heavy smoke was gauzy silk, enticing the viewer to peer more intently. His cheeks were pink and his lips glistened red, as though he’d recently been eating something cold and sweet. His hair was a crisp gold, brighter than any currency in circulation. In all, he gave the impression of an angel visiting on a charitable mission, granting goodness and grace to those around him. It was hard to look away from him and Tom didn’t try. There was a strange twist in Tom's gut as his eyes followed the line of Gray's cheekbone to the perfect curve of his chin. 

Mr. Dorian Gray turned to regard him with clarion blue eyes, the color of a perfect spring morning sky. Tom smiled, inclining his head in acknowledgment, and found he didn’t have to fake an interest. 

Hyde returned with a dusty bottle of brandy in one hand, two cups in the other. 

“Mr. Dorian Gray,” he said, under his breath. He poured Tom a glass, pushing it into his hand. “You couldn’t call him a porcelain doll, because he’s as alive as any young and vibrant thing. He’s got the vitality of a bud approaching bloom.” 

“Poetry, now?” Tom said. 

“You’re the one that’s staring at him like you're composing sonnets,” Hyde said, a strange note to his voice. That caught Tom’s attention enough for him to flick his eyes away from Gray and meet Hyde’s gaze. 

It wasn’t that Hyde looked ugly, in comparison. It was just that Hyde’s face had the grandeur of a building that had stood for some time, and his fine features bore traces of his rage and passion. Where Dorian was luscious, Hyde could be said to be virile. 

Tom’s attention made Hyde smile. There was a sly humor there that would not have fit on Dorian’s curved lips—they didn’t have the experience for it. 

“Perfect,” Hyde said. “Look at me just like that. Nothing will bring him over faster than you seeming to prefer the sight of another.” 

He cupped his hand underneath Tom's glass and brought it up to Tom’s lips, smiling all the while. The brandy was better than what Tom might usually buy, but not very good. Nonetheless, the sharpness of the citrus zest and the must of dried fruit wet his mouth most satisfyingly. 

“What are we going to ask him, if he comes over?" he said, holding Hyde's gaze as Hyde took the glass away from his lips. 

“We are going to be most sympathetic," Hyde said. "His rate of destruction has accelerated lately. I suspect that he is feeling rather alone in the world. A face like that wants nothing more than a mirror to gaze back adoringly.” 

“And, what?” Tom said. “He confesses to his crimes?" 

“He tells us his woes,” Hyde said. “I can't imagine he understands them as crimes—I’m sure he suffers like St. Sebastian.” 

“Beautifully,” Tom said. 

Hyde’s smile went even more crooked. "Just so," he said, flicking his eyes over Tom’s shoulder. “He approaches. Keep your eyes on me as much as possible, as we talk. It’ll drive him to distraction if his audience doesn’t seem to adore him sufficiently. That’ll bring the martyr out of him.” 

Moments later, a voice from over them. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen you fellows here before," said Mr. Dorian Gray. Even his voice was charming. 

Hyde sat back to look up at him, and nudged Tom to do likewise. Tom leaned in closer to his erstwhile enemy as he turned his regard to their prey. 

Gray's lips were twisted. It might have been an ugly expression on someone else, but such a thing was impossible for that face. 

“And I haven’t seen you,” Hyde said, easily. He gestured to the ottoman in front of him. Gray sat. “I would have remembered such loveliness, had I the opportunity before.” 

“Mr. Dorian Gray, if you please,” he said. He was smoking a cigarette, opium-scented as everything else was, and it drew patterns in the haze. 

“I’m Mr. Reginald Hastings,” he said. "And this is my dear friend, Mr. Esmé Amarinth. You must call me Reggie, of course.” 

Hyde’s smile was guileless in precisely the way that meant he was most full of duplicity. Tom was reasonably sure that was a thing that only he could see. He was also a rascal—the name he’d given Tom!

“I go by my middle name,” Tom said. "Thomas. I've never much felt like an Esmé and if we are to be intimates, I want you to call me Tom.” 

“Tom and Reggie,” Dorian said. “It is a pleasure to see new faces.” 

“I can’t imagine any faces could compare, if you start your day seeing your own,” Hyde said, leaning forward. His eyes were wide. It was a respectable attempt at a simper—Tom couldn’t help but cast him an amused smile. He supposed that was exactly what he was supposed to do, in this little dance. The proof of that was the way Dorian’s eyes went to Tom’s face, not Hyde’s: he noticed best who wasn’t looking at him. 

“One can’t help but get bored with unrelenting beauty,” Tom said, feeling some devil in him. “Nature is beautiful only for a breath, but its most sincere expression is decay. That’s the real stuff.” 

Dorian sat back like he’d been slapped, red rising in his cheeks. Hyde couldn’t conceal the amusement in his theatrical horror. Tom could see it and it warmed him more than the brandy. 

“Tom, my dear,” he said. “You have no soul."

This statement didn’t help Dorian’s composure. He looked rattled as if a train had run over his foot. Tom wasn’t sure why, but the bloodhound in him had the scent. 

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, going on instinct. “The soul is God’s gift of perfection, that is true—but it is nothing without the body to house it. Christ was man made flesh and without the flesh, decaying, on the route to dust, there is no soul. A man without death is an angel and that is no man at all.” 

“Ugh, theology again with you,” Hyde said. He pinched Tom’s side and Tom reached down to cover his hand, press it against himself. 

“Angels are perfection,” Dorian said. "Who wouldn't want to be an angel?” 

His color was still high and his breath was short. The cigarette was forgotten between his fingers, growing an unsteady column of ash. 

With that, Tom looked Gray full in the face for the first time and let the weight of his experience settle heavy in his eyes. 

“Why don’t you tell me, Dorian Gray?" 

Dorian’s spine went stiff, like a startled cat. From the corner of Tom’s eye, he could see Hyde roll his eyes. But then he leaned forward too, dropping whatever affectation he had sported. 

“If you don’t want to answer, perhaps we could ask Basil Hallward,” he said. “I’m sure he has an opinion about the downsides of angelic company.” 

Dorian shot to his feet. Hyde reached up and effortlessly pulled him back down. 

“Who are you?” Gray said. He was clearly pushing as much anger into his tone as he could, but it hit a discordant note with his youthful loveliness. This was another benefit of experience, Tom thought. It was much easier to be menacing when your face showed your years. 

“Guardian angels,” Hyde said, teeth bared in a manic smile. “Come to protect the flock.”

The color now drained from Dorian’s face, leaving him bloodless and white as a marble statue. 

“The angels are shepherds now?” Tom said, just to be an ass. 

“I can’t ever win with you,” Hyde sighed. Dorian's eyes darted between the two of them, not knowing where to rest. Finally, he paused on Tom’s face and studied him. 

“I’ve been cursed,” he said. “If you've come to—I don't know. If you’ve come to _protect_ anyone, it’s not me you’re after.”

There was a pathetic whine in his voice, but also genuine fear. It caught Tom’s interest. 

“By whom?” Tom said. 

“I was given a book,” he said. “Many years ago. A poisonous French novel about a decadent aesthete—it’s demonic. Its poison is far more literal than you could imagine and it has cursed me into this unlife.” 

His voice was breathless, but still as sweet as a bell. Tom found himself compelled and put off in equal measure. The suspicions that had sedimented under his skin from years of life were not easy to shake, but it was hard not to feel at least some sympathies rise for a face like that. 

Nonetheless, he made his voice harder when he repeated, "By whom, Dorian? Who gave you the book?” 

Dorian swallowed and licked his lips. He caught one between his perfect teeth, just for a moment, before releasing it. 

“Lord Henry Wotton,” he said. “I’m his creature." 

Tom looked at Hyde the moment that Hyde was looking for him. 

“Right,” he said. “We’ll walk you home, Mr. Gray. Mr.—"

“Hastings,” Hyde said, with a roll of his eyes. 

“Mr. Hastings will keep you company, for your protection. You’ll show us this book. And I’ll go pay a call to Lord Henry.”

* * *

Gray didn’t stop talking on their walk. Tom stopped listening pretty quickly. It was mostly drivel—there was an endless well of self-importance from which he drew nourishment and he seemed willing to spill it out all over them both. 

Hyde walked ahead with Gray on his arm, holding Gray's hand down with one of his own. It could masquerade as a gesture of solicitude, but Tom knew it for restraint. 

That recognition set an ember glowing in Tom's chest. It warmed him, even though his suit was still not heavy enough for the wind. 

Hyde followed Dorian through the door, close at his heels, but he spared a moment to cast a wink over his shoulder. 

At that, even Tom couldn’t deny that this was at least a little bit fun. The game was afoot, as Shakespeare wrote in a play about yet another Henry. For years, Tom had told himself he was a policeman for the sake of the victim and society; he narrated his work as a shepherd of the flock, the guardian angel that Hyde had invoked in jest. By now, though, he recognized the excitement in his breast for what it was. There was the game of it. 

He took a moment outside Gray's door. He thought of the people that had died and he knew that this was in part for them. Not even Hyde was so devoid of sympathy as he pretended. But sometimes he thought he wouldn’t mind if the case never ended—he felt at the precipice, in moments like these, teetering above a great height. He always felt the urge to jump and see whether he would fly. 

Actually bringing the criminals in, finding the dingy truth at the center of it all—that was the hard thump of hitting the ground. 

Right now, there were a pair of suspicious characters, a conspiracy, a mission. Right now, he had Hyde flattering and lying and spinning a web that only Tom could see through. There were tales being told of books and sin. 

It was going to turn out sordid. It always did. But there was glory in this, in these few moments while on the hunt. 

He walked into Gray's house at last. Hyde and Gray were bent over what was likely the demonic book, golden hair just inches from russet-brown. 

Hyde looked up and his eyebrows quirked. Tom suspected Hyde could see right into his soul. 

“Dorian is showing me this dastardly French Epicureanism,” he said. 

“I must speak with my colleague,” Tom said, voice brisk. Hyde silently mouthed “colleague?” at him.

“And my friend,” Tom added, humoring him. 

Hyde grinned and went, taking the book with him. Wise. It was probably nothing, but they’d still best not leave it with a suspect. 

Tom pulled him into the next room. 

“Did you receive a revelation?” Hyde said. He sounded as eager as Tom felt, the same wild pleasure in his voice. Tom’s whole body gravitated toward it until they were touching, forehead resting against Hyde’s. Finally, this close, Tom could smell the body underneath the cologne, the human clean sweat with an overlay of pheromones. Hyde looked startled, genuinely surprised. His mouth was parted. 

“Of a sort,” Tom said and kissed him. 

_fin_.


End file.
